“Self-googling” is a term which means querying one’s self in the Google search engine. It has become quite a trend recently, especially since the use of the internet has become widespread over the recent years. It might sound narcissistic at first, but for web professionals, self-googling should be second nature. Think of it as part of your every day routine. Self-google at least once a day. Don’t take it against yourself if you haven’t done it before, it’s perfectly normal and yes, recommended.

Do you self-google? I do it. You should, too. In fact, I encourage all bloggers to Google themselves and I can see various reasons why you should do it.

1. Know who’s talking about you.

Usually, when people quote you in their blogs, they link to your post. Doing that, you’re instantly given notice that someone’s talking about you. However, not everyone follows the practice. In fact, when I self-googled a few days ago, I found out a web site has posted a rebuttal of one of my articles for another blog. If I didn’t perform a search on my name, I wouldn’t have known about it. It’s always best to know if anyone’s referring to you so you can post your rebuttal of the rebuttal or even just to know in general, what people think about you. You’d be surprised. I’ve seen people talk about top bloggers in big forums without linking back to them. And let’s just say, the comments aren’t always flattering.

2. Know what other people see.

Have you applied for a gig recently? Chances are, the client or employer might do a search on you. Do you know what the client would find? When I first started applying for freelance jobs, unbeknownst to me, a query of my name results in several links to social networking sites, irrelevant forums, personal blogs and the like. Do you really want other people to see all those? What if you have embarrassing personal posts? Or a long-forgotten comment in a forum where you’ve behaved badly? When I first performed a Google search on my own name and found out I had several results from forums and blogs when I was much, MUCH younger, I went to work and deleted blog posts and comments. I was lucky enough I could do so. Some forums don’t allow you to delete anything you’ve written after a particular time.

3. Gauge the Popularity of your Blog

As was said earlier, when people link to you, it’ll be easy to say who talks about you. There are more who won’t link to you and mention you in passing, however. When people mention you in passing, and frequently at that too, you could lump those instances with the number of back links to get a glimpse of your blog’s popularity.

Self-googling has many uses, despite sound a bit narcissistic. Think of it as being a part of the new media where every type of information about you that you put on the web is accessible by a vast number of people. Try it, it might do you good.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 3:31 pm and is filed under thoughts. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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